country

Sara Evans

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Missouri-raised country singer who turned a late-'90s breakthrough into a long run of radio staples — 'Born to Fly,' 'Suds in the Bucket,' 'A Little Bit Stronger.'

Sara Evans was born February 5, 1971, in Boonville, Missouri, and raised on a 400-acre farm near New Franklin, one of seven children in a family that got by on her mother's work as a school bus driver and her father's as a newspaper pressman. She began singing lead in the family's band, the Evans Family Band, at age six, and later learned guitar, mandolin and drums.

As a teenager she formed a band with her older brother Matt before moving to Nashville in 1991 to pursue country music. She married Craig Schelske and briefly lived in Aumsville, Oregon, before returning to Nashville, where work as a demo singer led to a recording contract with RCA Records.

Her first album, Three Chords and the Truth, released in 1997, leaned hard toward traditional honky-tonk and drew critical attention without much radio traction. The follow-up, No Place That Far, produced a number one country hit with its title track and pointed toward the more contemporary Nashville sound of her later work.

Her biggest commercial run came with Born to Fly (2000), Restless (2003) and Real Fine Place (2005), each selling over a million copies and yielding number one singles in Born to Fly, Suds in the Bucket and A Real Fine Place to Start. Across her career she has placed five songs at number one on the Billboard country chart and nine more in the top ten, including I Could Not Ask for More, I Keep Looking and Cheatin'.

She briefly appeared on Dancing with the Stars in 2006 before stepping back from recording to focus on family, releasing only a Greatest Hits set in 2008. She returned in 2011 with Stronger, led by the two-week number one A Little Bit Stronger, followed by Slow Me Down in 2014; she then left RCA to form her own label and released Words in 2017. Her honors include awards from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association, plus nominations for Female Vocalist of the Year and Single of the Year.

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